A lot of you guys probably won't like what I'm about to say.

To be clear, I don't say things just to agree with a common narrative, I think it's incredibly damaging when YouTube creators only ever talk about things that they know their audience will applaud them for, or worse yet, if they say things they don't even believe for that same purpose.

But regardless of what I expect to happen, these are my actual honest opinions on a story that has recently gained quite a bit of traction.

The story is about Black Myth Wukong, which is an upcoming action RPG published by Game Science, a Chinese developer, with a story originally told by a popular 16th century novel.

It looks good, make no mistake there.

It looks fun, it looks well made, and I certainly have an interest in playing it myself.

But for today, we're not talking about the actual game, we're talking about its developers, we're talking about a consulting company that everyone loves to hate right now called SBI, or Sweet Baby Incorporated.

Lightning fast backstory.

Sweet Baby Incorporated has become an absolute pariah in the video game industry as of late because they try very hard to inject themselves into the narrative story of whatever project they can, and a lot of those stories end up being complete garbage as a result.

The work that they do feels not just unnecessary, that's putting it kindly, but actively harmful to the integrity of the games that they consult on, for the purpose of shoehorning diversity metrics.

And the behavior that this company exhibits outwardly is pathetic.

Their employees try to cancel all of their critics, their defenders repeatedly make up lies or conveniently misinterpret arguments in the most uncharitable ways possible, and for anyone who needs to hear this, SBI is a pox on the industry.

Gaming would be holistically better off if they just ceased to exist, and I myself have been very vocal about that fact over the past few months, at the very least, as they perpetrate behavior that I feel has no place in the entire industry.

To be as clear as possible, I have no sympathy for them.

This is not me defending them, this is me critiquing the concept of media literacy regarding a story that they happen to be attached to because responsibility and truth are consistent principles regardless of who the subject is.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Sweet Baby Incorporated is a company owned and operated by people whom I consider to be deceptive, predatory, and opportunistic, but none of that actually changes what I see happening here with Black Myth Wukong, which is why I'm making the video.

Just because they are a certain way does not mean that I have to be or anyone else should be.

I hope everyone can understand that and bear with me as I tell you precisely why that is.

This right here is what I'm talking about, and to properly demonstrate, I've chosen this article right now from a random website called Tech4Gamers.

Nothing against them personally, just to be clear, there's quite a few similar examples out there I could draw from, but this one is a pretty good showcase of what I mean.

Title, quote, Black Myth Wukong devs refused to work with Sweet Baby Inc.

End quote.

Okay, so far so good.

Story highlights.

Black Myth Wukong's developer refused to be guided by Sweet Baby Incorporated.

The company demanded a ridiculous $7 million in guidance fees.

Various outlets are reportedly calling out game science for this move.

End quote.

Cool, right?

Simple.

Makes sense.

See, the problem here, it's not really a problem, but just, this is genuinely believable.

Very much so.

And the reason it's believable is because Sweet Baby Incorporated makes it believable through their use of tactics like these.

Here's two examples of what I'm talking about from GDC, Game Developers Conference, as well as another discussion panel.

If you're a creative working in AAA, which I did for many, many years, put this stuff up to your higher-ups, and if they don't see the value in what you're asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what's going to happen if they don't give you what you want.

Have a coffee with marketing so that you can absolutely terrify them by telling them, here's what's going to happen if you don't do this.

Yeah, see, that's a valid thing to criticize, and it basically sounds like this company engages in softcore extortion so they can cram their dipshit narrative ideas into as many games as possible, which is, again, a perfectly deserving thing to call out.

But bear with me here.

Further down in the article, we find this, quote, According to a Chinese media press release, Game Science refused to take the company's guidance as they demanded an unbelievably high $7 million.

Agreeing to the offer would have added forced inclusivity to the game and removed creative freedom from the developers, end quote.

Okay, so Sweet Baby Incorporated, a company that is highly scrutinized right now for their behavior, which I, among many others, consider to be fairly despicable behavior, allegedly attempted to extort $7 million from Game Science, the developers behind Black Myth Wukong, and were shut down in the process, leading to a press release by Chinese media, which is now being discussed here.

Right?

Clear?

Excellent.

Except… No, it's not.

See, if you actually go to the source that they cited, it's a random Twitter user, named Pirate Nation, with a lengthy post of their own translating a block of text from Chinese to English with the caption, quote, Chinese media, Black Myth Wukong, refused to be extorted $7 million by Sweet Baby, end quote.

Which makes it rather obvious why this particular news outlet then echoed that tagline.

But if you go one step further, uh, I'll just, I'll show you.

Pirate Nation doesn't give any details on the true source of the allegation in their post, aside from a screenshot, but if you track down the actual place that this claim originally came from, you find it here, on a platform called Weibo, posted by a user named Tianhu.

This is where I sorta just have to say it how it is.

Weibo is a Chinese microblogging social media platform, and Tianhu is, for lack of a better word, an influencer.

He has a sizable following, sure, but neither the platform nor the person on it qualify as Chinese media.

What we're talking about here is the equivalent of a large Facebook user posting their opinion with zero, count em, zero cited sources.

No actual connection to the development team, whatsoever, and no discernible authority on this that I could find anywhere online.

And believe me, I tried.

Somehow, a Chinese social media user with a couple hundred thousand followers makes a post with quite literally zero evidence.

Another user on Twitter picks it up and attributes that claim to Chinese media, leading to bloggers or news outlets running with the story claiming that as per a Chinese media press release, which is one step even further removed from reality, Sweet Baby Incorporated tried to extort $7 million from GameScience.

When the reality is that their source is actually just a random Twitter user quoting a random Weibo user.

Just to put this in perspective, I hope, I don't care how big someone's social media following is, a random person on Facebook posting claims with zero cited sources and zero evidence is not an American media press release.

That's not how any of this works.

Sadly, this kind of media literacy is obviously rare.

A lot of people have decided to run with the ball here, and I can't fully blame them, because Sweet Baby Incorporated definitely brought this on themselves by acting the way that they have and saying the things that they do, but this entire subject is getting twisted beyond recognition.

After this whole thing got started, a hefty amount of people began claiming that this article right here from IGN was evidence of the claim being true.

GameScience had denied the attempt at extortion by Sweet Baby Incorporated, who had then weaponized IGN, this is like the through-line thought process that they had, to slander the game as much as possible, in retaliation for them refusing to bend the knee.

And yes, I can see why the puzzle pieces kind of fit, maybe, but they really sort of don't.

The article is bad, no doubt about that, okay?

I can criticize this thing for days, and the translation is about as malicious as you can expect, which makes it even more believable that this was a hit piece designed to inflict as much damage as possible.

However, this is a company who uses recruitment posts like this, for example, to advertise.

Now, me?

I don't personally care.

This kind of stuff doesn't bother me.

But for an IGN writer?

You know the type I'm talking about, the woke-scold type people?

Yeah.

Through the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, and sensitivity, I can see why they got upset enough to write a piece about this company, and I don't think it has anything to do with Sweet Baby Incorporated.

The entire subject has become a rallying cry in the dumbest way possible.

After this whole thing happened, I started seeing posts about how successful Black Myth Wukong will be because gamers reject the influence of SBI, which they do, by the way, that's true.

And I even saw people talking about how the game was number one on Steam's top seller list because gamers were sending a message and winning the war.

But guys, the game was number one from June 4th to June 11th already, which was before the post from Weibo got exported to Twitter and even started to gain traction that it eventually had.

Like, this was before all of it was number one.

This entire thing reminds me of the ancient Egyptian legend Ouroboros, which is a serpent eating its own tail.

A social media user in China, seeing the very well-deserved ire that Sweet Baby Incorporated has earned themselves here in the West, decided to throw out a paragraph regarding IGN and Sweet Baby Interactive and made a claim about SBI approaching game science.

Which they might have, but we don't know, and they didn't cite any sources, and they don't work for the development team, and there's just no evidence.

A few days after that random claim hits Weibo, a user who feels the same way on Twitter translates it over and says Chinese media, leading to bloggers and influencers here saying that a Chinese media press release has somehow highlighted SBI's extortion scheme plain as day, which was really just a person who probably saw the news here and then started connecting some dots, which is fine, but we should look at the story for what it really is.

I mean, come on, guys.

I'm trying to keep it together here, but come on.

China has an entire ethics panel for video games, which was established to implement the spirit of national propaganda, including a directive to block games that include homosexuality or pregnancy before marriage, among many other things.

That's not very DEI of them, and speaks to the extremely restrictive reality of game publishing in the Chinese market, which means that even if Sweet Baby Incorporated somehow deluded themselves into thinking that they would be allowed to have any say in the narrative of a Chinese-centered video game, they would be shut down immediately, because half the stuff that they're determined to force into these games, the DEI agendas I mean, is specifically denied on principle by the Chinese government.

What I'm trying to say is that Sweet Baby Incorporated sucks.

Their employees often use deceptive tactics to get what they want, they certainly have an impact here in the Western gaming market when it comes to video game narratives that they're employed to work on, and they shouldn't, and it's annoying, and there's a never-ending parade of reasons to criticize them, valid reasons I might add.

But this?

This doesn't appear to be one of them.

And while I understand that a lot of people are passionate about this stuff generally speaking, I think it's important to analyze a story for what it really is, not just what we wish it were.

End of the day, I don't think the story is real.

Every single instinct that I have is screaming at me that this story is just full-send fabrication entirely.

And since a good number of people have asked me to talk about it, they directly asked me to discuss this, for better or for worse, I did.

This is me discussing it.

I know a lot of you won't like what you just heard, but it's my actual God's honest opinion on things, and that's what this channel is.

That's it.

If you want to support anything that I do, or anything that I will do in the future, links are down below.

Patreon and Locals, monthly subscriptions, that's a great way, as well as a special VPN deal for anyone who wants it, it's a really solid deal down below, linked in the description.

But I'll cut it there and stop rambling.

As always, thank you all for watching, this is Particular Fitting for today, question everything, and have a nice night.